Details

Title

"Mourn Black Murder"

Artist/Maker

Leah Jaynes Karp (American, born 1940)

Date

1982

Medium

Dye coupler print on paper with ink

Dimensions

Contact the museum for more information

Credit

Gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection

Accession #

1983.62.2

Location

Currently not on view

Leah Jaynes Karp created this mixed-media series in response to the Atlanta Child Murders. Between 1979 and 1981, at least twenty-nine Black children, teens, and young adults—mostly boys—were kidnapped and murdered; a suspect was identified and apprehended in 1981. In Karp’s hauntingly delicate works, she pulls phrases and words from news articles covering the events and interweaves them with cutout photographs of lilies. The overall effect of the work is a poignant commemoration of the tragedy of many young lives senselessly lost.